Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 23, 2016)
Wednesday, November 23, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon 2 O P I N I O N Controlling the narrative By Terry Weygandt Guest Columnist g n i v i g s k n a h Happy T from the staff at r e p a p s w e N t e g The Nug t a th y it n u m m o c a r fo We are thankful ! r e p a sp w e n l a c o l ir e th supports Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: I want to express my thanks to Daniel Stroemple, who rang my doorbell on Veterans Day, with the offer of a pie that he had pur- chased expressly to give to veterans. As I understand it, Daniel ordered several desserts when the Sisters High School baseball team was selling them as a fundraiser and paid for them himself so that he could honor his grandfather and father by donating these des- serts to Sisters-area veterans. In talking with him, I learned that his grandfather was a World War II and Korea War veteran (whom he did not know because his grandfather died before Daniel was born), and I learned that Daniel’s father is a Vietnam veteran. Daniel is a SHS freshman and plays on the baseball team, and I can testify that he is a credit to his team. His grandfather would be honored by his sacrifice and extremely proud of him. I told him to tell his father and mother that he has brought great honor on them as par- ents who have raised such a fine young man. Thank you, Daniel. John Miller, Col, USAF (Ret) s s s To the Editor: I was a little nervous to open our See LETTERS on page 26 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Slt. chance snow Chance rain Showers Chance rain Chance rain Chance rain 43/32 46/34 44/29 42/29 43/30 44/na The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Publisher - Editor: Kiki Dolson News Editor: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Williver Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Advertising: Karen Kassy Graphic Design: Jess Draper Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Accounting: Erin Bordonaro The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. My niece, a Trump sup- porter, as is all my family in rural Ohio, saw an arti- cle I posted on Facebook titled “Why We Grieve Today,” and as you might imagine we had a long, heated discussion and ended up not really agree- ing on anything. How is it we see the world so differ- ently when we come from the same background and have the same values? I concluded that we each get our information from sources that align with our viewpoints and rarely get information outside our media bubble. The difference, though, and the point of this let- ter, is that conservative Americans largely follow Republican-leaning news sources that have con- trolled the narrative in the United States for 30 years with misinformation, fear and outright lies. This is how Trump became presi- dent. Hillary Clinton was the most investigated (and exonerated) politician in history. The Benghazi investi- gations dragged on lon- ger than the investigation into the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the assassination of President Kennedy, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the response to Hurricane Katrina. What was the result of the FBI reviewing 30,000 emails and millions of email fragments? A rep- rimand. You would have thought she’d killed some- body. (Oh right, she’s been accused of that, too!) The result is this vis- ceral, crazy hatred of Hillary Clinton. We were (and still are) constantly reminded that she lies. She lies. She lies. She lies. The Republican character assassination stuck, but we all bought into it to some extent because when you hear something over and over again you tend to believe it, whether or not it’s true. The most obvious his- torical example of media spewing hate and misinfor- mation is Nazi Germany, who were masters at con- trolling the message and turned political propa- ganda into an artform. But a more recent example is Rwanda in 1994. Rwanda’s hate radio and an extremist newspa- per convinced the majority group Hutu to hunt down and kill nearly a million people — men, women and children — in a five- week span. Using lies and fostering an environment of fear, anger and hatred, the Hutu-controlled media justified the extermination of the minority group Tutsi on the grounds they posed a threat to the majority. The media was able to con- vince ordinary people who had never killed before to turn on their friends, neighbors and even fam- ily members, rationalizing that they were defending themselves, protecting their country and restoring what they believed justly belonged to their own eth- nic group. Sound familiar? There have been more than 700 cases of hateful harassment and intimidation in the United States since Election Day. — Southern Poverty Law Center There have been more than 700 cases of hateful harassment and intimida- tion in the United States since Election Day, reports the Southern Poverty Law Center. Last Sunday, when asked about the hate crimes committed in his name, the president-elect was “saddened” and told his supporters to stop. On Monday, Trump named a white nationalist as his senior White House advisor. So much for reining in the hate. Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.
